Peter Abelard

Contrasting with Anselm’s patently metaphysical approach to truth, Abelard’s is resolutely semantic: he focuses on a semantic property of propositions, namely the content they express. (Abelard will of course often use the term ‘‘truth’’ in his theological writings as well, but we will not deal with this material here.) His approach is representative of approaches to truth inspired by the logica vetus material (on the Logica vetus vs. Logica modernorum distinction, see entry on Logic in this volume); he develops it in different parts of his Logica ‘ingredientibus’,’ in particular in the parts corresponding to his commentaries on Aristotle’s De interpretatione and on Boethius’ De topicis differentiis (Abelard’s considerations on truth are in fact scattered throughout his writings and thus not systematically presented). Abelard’s discussions of the concept of truth are embedded in his general analysis ofthe semantics of propositions. Indeed, one of the most debated but still mysterious aspects of Abelard’s semantics, the famous dicta (the contents of propositions), is at the heart of the issue of truth.

Abelard’s very criterion of what is to count as a proposition (following Boethius and Aristotle) is based on the concept(s) of truth (and falsity): a proposition is what signifies the true or the false (significare verum vel falsum) (LIDe in. 3.01.100). Notice that, according to this definition, a proposition is not true or false, but it signifies the true or the false. This implies that, for Abelard, propositions are not the primary truth-bearers, but rather that they signify something which in turn is a truth-bearer properly speaking. What would that be? Abelard states that truth and falsity can be understood in three ways: as applying to statements (propositions); as applying to the understanding provoked by a statement; and as applying to what is said to be the case by a statement, its dictum (LI Top. 225, 22-29). He then goes on to argue that understandings cannot be truth-bearers properly speaking because incomplete expressions may have the same understandings as complete statements (for example, ‘‘A man runs’’ and ‘‘A running man’’ share the same understanding), but incomplete expressions cannot signify the true or the false, since they are not propositions (see Jacobi et al 1996:32).

That this is so also transpires from Abelard’s analysis of what differentiates propositions from other (complete) speech-acts such as questions, orders, wishes, etc. These different expressions can have the same intelligible content, but only propositions signify the true or the false, because only they consist in an evaluative judgment concerning truth and falsity (LI De in. 3.01.100). Indeed, according to Abelard, a proposition P corresponds to the assertion that P is true (cf. Jacobi 2004:146); in other words, he may be seen as maintaining the schema ‘‘P O It is true that P.’’ In Latin, such impersonal propositions (the right-hand side of the schema) are usually formulated with the ‘‘accusative-infinitive’’ nominalized form of the embedded proposition (for example, Verum est Socratem currere). The nominalized form asserts precisely the content of the proposition, that is, its dictum.

A dictum is ‘‘that which is said by the proposition’’ (LI De in. 3.04.26), that is, its content plus the assertion that what it signifies does obtain in reality. Therefore, for Abelard, dicta are the ultimate bearers of truth and falsity, since it is to them that the terms ‘‘true’’ and ‘‘false’’ are related by means of such propositions of the form ‘‘It is true that P.’’ Propositions are true or false derivatively, insofar as they state true or false dicta (cf. Nuchelmans 1973:9.4.3). Abelard’s notion of truth is thus essentially semantic: it is a semantic property of a proposition, i. e., the dictum/ content that it expresses, that makes it true or false.

Notice that this view implies a deflationist notion of truth: to assert the truth of a proposition is equivalent to simply asserting the proposition itself. From the truth of a proposition one cannot draw major metaphysical conclusions: if ‘‘a man is white’’ is true, one can merely conclude that there is a thing wHich iS a man and is also white (LI Cat. 59-60) (see also King 2004:4). But Abelard can also be seen as holding a correspondence theory of truth when he glosses the sentence ‘‘It is true that Socrates is a man and not a stone’’ as ‘‘It is the case in reality (in re) that [Socrates] is a man and not a stone’’ (L! De in. 3.04.26) (see also L! De in. 3.01.100).

In short, the distinguishing characteristic of Abelard’s theory of truth is the crucial role played by dicta. But dicta are neither linguistic entities nor real things in reality, and thus Abelard’s truth-bearers seem to fit neither of the two main kinds of truth-bearers mentioned above. Some (e. g., Nuchelmans 1973:9.4.2) view Abelard’s dicta as states of affairs; others (e. g., King 2004:4) take literally his claim that dicta are nothing at all. They stand to propositions in the same relation as things to their names, and yet they are not actual things. But the fact that their ontological status is debatable must not overshadow their central role in Abelard’s theory of truth and his semantics in general.